Final Act

by Van Fleisher

  At 6:10 a.m., she received a call from the Special Agent-in-Charge in LA. The dead shooter had been murdered. It was not suicide. They had reviewed the surveillance videos and were unable to see who might have shot him. The shooter’s gun was untraceable. Zoe asked if Ninad’s tracking app had been of any use, and the SAC replied, “Yes and no.”

  When Zoe asked him to explain, he told her that the app alerted them to a Red-level Recipient in the area, but the shooter’s progress toward the event stopped about ten minutes before the shooting. When that happened, they knew that he might have stopped or that the watch was removed so, receipt of the alert certainly raised our readiness level, but insofar as tracking, it didn’t help. Zoe requested that a trace be put on the shooter’s bank accounts to see if a large deposit had been made or might be in the coming days.

  So, here was another unidentified Recipient handler who wanted to make sure that his ‘robot’ assassin wouldn’t talk, and that the handler remained incognito. Were there others?

  At 7:00 a.m., she decided to call Vijay and see if he could add anything to the LA shooting. She knew he’d be up, although probably out running. Getting his voicemail and leaving a message, she began to sketch out where they were at the moment.

  Zoe was confident that the activities were Russian controlled. The assassinations and attempts had all targeted Democrats except for the Supreme Court Justice. She was equally sure that Vik Vasin played a key role, but as a handler of assassins, not as the leader of the operation. Lev Panova was probably involved, but, at best, he could only name Vasin.

  Was there another handler or handlers out there, and could they name Vasin or others higher up in the organization? Someone needed to make a mistake to give her a break. She made a note to investigate the D.C. and Las Vegas ‘good guys.’

  Vijay returned Zoe’s call, and she gave him an update on the Los Angeles assassination attempt. She waited while Vijay tapped away, looking into the history. Finally, he explained, “The shooter was on red alert and moving in the general direction toward the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. That might have triggered Ninad’s app, but I don’t know what distance parameters he’d set. At about five miles from the Plaza, his watch stopped transmitting. And then fifteen minutes later, an automatic secondary alert went out, signaling that the watch had been removed.

  Zoe asked if the secondary alert could be reduced to a minute. “If the watch re-connects, we’ll know, but until then, we’ll assume we have a shooter moving in. It’s better to err on the safe side.”

  Vijay confirmed that was possible, and he’d ask Alek to get right on it. “Speaking of Alek, I couldn’t reach him after you told me about the VitalTech search. You haven’t arrested him, have you?” he added, only half in jest.

  Zoe, too, chuckled and confirmed that no, they hadn’t. But she did say that they needed an explanation about how his name was attributed to the hack.

  Vijay promised to have him call.

  After hanging up with Zoe, he tried Alek again. Straight to voicemail. He left a voicemail and then a text message. He tried e-mail, Skype, WhatsApp, and Facetime. Worry was starting to creep into Vijay’s consciousness. He took Fritz out for a quick do-his-business break and headed out to Alek’s house.

  ***

  Quincy, Massachusetts. When Vijay arrived at Alek’s home, Alek’s car was parked in his driveway, but he didn’t answer the bell or Vijay’s knocking. He tried looking in through a window, and it did look like a dining room chair was overturned. He tried the front door and ground floor windows to no avail, but the back door was unlocked, so Vijay entered the house into the kitchen. It was not completely clean, as it might’ve been if Alek had gone away ... unless he left in a hurry. In the dining room, there was a chair that had been knocked over, but otherwise, it offered no clues. Alek’s office, however, was a different story. His laptop was gone, and there were a couple of papers on his desk. An empty cup of coffee was lying on its side on the desk, sitting in a pool of coffee, some dried and crusted, some still wet. Some coffee had also dripped off the desk onto the floor. Alek had no family or relatives that he knew of, so he called Zoe.

  Zoe sounded relieved to hear Vijay’s voice, “I was just going to call you because Ninad is getting some conflicting and inconsistent data from the information you’re sending.”

  “Inconsistent? Like what?”

  “Like, someone is marked as a Final Notice recipient with various emotional stages, but then they are removed as Recipients.”

  “You’re saying they as in more than one?”

  “Yes. There have been over ten in the last half hour.”

  Vijay became very concerned, “Zoe, I’m at Alek’s house right now. He’s not here. His car is here, though, and I think something is wrong.” Vijay detailed the scene at Alek’s. “Someone has either taken him – and I can’t believe I’m even saying this – or he’s fled.”

  “I’m assuming you don't have your laptop with you to check on the glitch?”

  “No, and Alek’s is gone. As soon as I get home, I’ll check it out.”

  “OK,” Zoe agreed. “We’re blind again right now, but can you wait there while I get an agent out from our Boston office? Don’t touch anything.”

  Vijay couldn’t believe that Alek left on his own, but he did believe that somehow, Alek was involved with the inconsistent data. He checked out the rest of the house, and there were no open drawers, nor were there suitcases lying around. There was nothing that signaled a struggle or a hasty getaway. Vijay had been pretty sure that when Alek’s ID had been associated with the hack at VitalTech, it was a setup, but he didn’t understand why. Perhaps someone wanted to make the FBI think that Alek was involved and fled when he’d been identified as the hacker. But who would believe that?

  FBI Agent Denise McBrair arrived, and Vijay explained what he’d seen. He confirmed and stated that except for the back door and front door handles, he hadn’t touched anything. She told him that Zoe had briefed her on the background, including the possibility that he might have fled, based on the VitalTech ID discovery.

  Vijay exclaimed, “But that was a setup.”

  McBrair countered with, “That’s what Supervisory Agent Brouet believes, too, based on Alek’s cooperation so far. But she also said something else: that the information flow that Alek helped set up had become the central source of our defense against the assassination attempts. And now, it’s not working. Could it be part of a plan to have us depend on something and then pull it?”

  “I know Alek,” Vijay countered. “He’d never do that. I’m afraid he’s in danger, and he’s already lost his wife and twelve-year-old son. If you don’t need me anymore, I’m going home to have a look at why our data feed isn’t working.” And then, to himself, “Cease and desist be damned!”

  ***

  CHAPTER 24 – DEAD MEN DON’T TALK

  Boston, Massachusetts. Mike Kalin and Sara Huckers were breathing hard after their sexual athletics. Kalin lit a cigarette, which garnered an eye-roll, sigh, and complaint, “I thought you were trying to quit. And this is a No-Smoking room.”

  “After sex with you, I need something to calm down,” Mike purred disingenuously. And then very coldly, “And who gives a shit about a hotel’s rules?”

  “Do you smoke after sex with your Russian bride?”

  “None of your god damn business. And why do you keep using that phrase to describe my wife?”

  “Well, she’s Russian, and she’s your wife.”

  Mercifully, for both Mike and Sara, Mike’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and got out of bed, walking to the hotel bathroom. “Yeah.”

  Sara couldn’t hear details, but Mike’s voice rose several times with what sounded like a foreign language. An angry foreign language and a name. Yuri.

  Sara was the HR Director at VitalTech. At twenty-nine years old, she’d been hired by Mike, even though she had no experience for the job. During a few “Get to know your Team Member” dinners, Mike revealed that
he and his wife were having marital problems. She drank a lot, and they really couldn’t communicate. He compared their problem with the ease that he and Sara had, talking about a wide range of issues. He shared that he was planning an imminent divorce. That was some months ago, however, and Sara was starting to question his sincerity.

  She enjoyed her job at VitalTech, although she didn’t understand Mike’s choices from the candidates she had recruited. But, she accepted them as learning experiences.

  Mike returned, and it was apparent he was still upset. “I’ve got to go. I’ll pay the bill, and you can spend the night and charge whatever you want to the room. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Sara got out of bed and walked over to him, trying to hug and kiss him and get him to change his mind. He pushed her away with a force that hurt.

  Sara exclaimed, “Oww! I was just looking forward to a nice evening with you. You don’t have to take your anger out on me,” although this wasn’t the first time, nor was it even close to the worst time.

  “Leave me alone, or this will be the last time we see each other after OR during office hours. Understand?”

  Sara assumed that was a rhetorical question and didn’t answer, and he lashed out, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

  “Yes,” she whimpered as Kalin finished dressing and left the room.

  Kalin drove to the address given to him in an industrial section of Quincy. He was admitted and led to an office near the back. As he passed an open doorway, a guy at a computer looked at him directly. Kalin thought he looked vaguely familiar.

  Yuri looked at Kalin and smiled, “Did I ruin your little ‘get to know your employees better’ evening?”

  “Fuck you, and who is that guy down the hall?”

  “He’s one of your ex-employees who you didn’t get to know better,” he smiled.

  “What if he recognizes me?”

  “Don’t worry. Dead men don’t talk. Besides, he’s the one who has now neutralized your friend Vijay’s data transmission to the FBI. They can’t stop us now.”

  ***

  Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Vijay was struggling with finding the problem with the data feed. He and Alek were a capable, complementary team, but on his own, he was baffled by the way Alek had hidden the feed so that VitalTech wouldn’t find it. Could that have been planned all along? No, Alek was in trouble, and he needed to find him. He knew that Zoe’s primary concern was protection against more assassinations. Finding Alek was important but secondary to her, so it was up to him.

  Alone in his empty house, with Fritz lying at his feet, Vijay tried to focus on the missing Alek instead of the absent Jennifer and Karima. Alek’s VT2 was off, and Zoe had tried to find him via his cell phone, but that too was shut off. And his laptop had been reconfigured to a virtual IP, meaning he could be anywhere. Whoever had him wasn’t communicating or asking for anything. Vijay surmised that they must have forced him to make the data feed unstable with threats of torture or some other unpleasant action.

  ***

  Washington, D.C. Zoe got the call at 9:00 p.m. as she and Demi had just finished dinner. A presidential candidate had just been killed in Charleston, SC. And yes, the killer was subsequently killed by an unidentified shooter. To her question, the killer wasn’t wearing a VT2, and they were still checking his identity. Zoe called Ninad, and he confirmed her fear: According to the data feed, there wasn’t an identified Recipient near the shooting.

  Zoe texted Vijay and asked him to call her ASAP at any time. He rang back immediately and had seen the newsflash about the shooting. Looking at the VT2 database, there were three active Final Notice recipients, two women and a man in hospice. There was one other recorded Recipient, but he was off-line, and no signals were being received. If he died while wearing his VT2, it would show. So, either he’s alive and not wearing his VT2, or he died while not wearing his watch.

  Zoe replied flatly, “I’m guessing it was the latter, as the assassin was killed. Send me his details in case we have a problem IDing him. Are you any closer to getting us a stable feed?”

  “Zoe, I’ll be honest ... no.”

  Zoe asked, “Do you think Ninad can help? He worked with Alek a bit on getting the final setup.”

  “I’m OK with that. Ask him to call me in the morning. Any time after 8. I’m sorry, Zoe.”

  ***

  Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Vijay and Ninad were looking at their screens, trying to find the hidden code that Alek had written when both their screens, 450 miles apart, starting flickering and Vijay’s VT2 buzzed, giving him his Final Notice.

  Vijay put Ninad on hold and escaped from the system back-end into the primary VT2 monitoring system. He looked at the screen and was dumbfounded – it displayed the first fifty of 10,455,000 Final Notice recipients! Every VT2 user had received their Final Notice.

  He got back on the call to Ninad and explained what was happening. Ninad hadn’t seen the primary monitoring system, so when Vijay told him what had happened, Ninad exclaimed, “Oh God, thank you! I thought it was real.”

  Despite the crisis, Vijay chuckled when he realized that Ninad was wearing a VT2 and thought it was an authentic Final Notice for himself. They had a brief laugh, but it was very brief, as they thought about the havoc it was wreaking. They agreed it was done on purpose, but why?

  Vijay knew Alek best and said, “I think this proves that Alek is alive. But did he do this independently, or was he forced to do it?”

  Ninad replied, “If Alek is alive, we have to assume that he is being forced to do things against his will – for example, making the data unpredictable. So, if they already have us flying blind, why cause mass panic unless something huge is about to happen? Or could Alek have done this as a message? And if so, what did he mean by it? We need to get into his head.”

  And a light switched on in Vijay’s.

  ***

  Quincy, Massachusetts. Mike Kalin was raging. VitalTech’s phones were ringing off the hook, and their website had crashed due to an overload of queries from millions of VT2 users who had received their Final Notices. J. Edward was even screaming down Kalin’s cell phone, telling him that the alert almost gave him a heart attack and that the markets had gotten wind of what was obviously a glitch and VitalTech’s stock had dropped twenty-three percent.

  Worse yet, neither Kalin nor anyone else at VitalTech knew what happened, nor could they fix it. Kalin made a call. “What the fuck are you doing with our database?”

  Yuri answered, “It will be restored soon. Our visiting computer expert, the one you saw the other day, thought he’d be funny. The only thing funny about it is that it just shortened his life-span.”

  Kalin shouted back, but he was talking into a void. Yuri was gone.

  ***

  Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Vijay looked at his phone contacts and ... yes, he had it. He called Zoe. Vijay was energized and hopeful, but Zoe sounded like she was on the opposite pole.

  “Are you OK?”

  “No, Vijay. I’m not. Another Supreme Court Justice has just been killed.”

  “Same MO?”

  “No. The left has gotten into the act – the Antifada. The sad thing was that the shooter was a Recipient, wearing his VT2, so we could have stopped it if the system was working. And nobody killed him afterward.”

  “Who was the judge?”

  “The newest one that caused such an uproar over his sexual acts, drunkenness, and lying to Congress.”

  Vijay, seriously, “But I guess that’s still a bad thing.”

  Zoe laughed out loud. “You could say that. But are you calling to tell me that you and Ninad fixed the problem?”

  “Maybe.” And Vijay proceeded to tell Zoe about the chip in Alek’s head. When Alek shared his contact information with Vijay, they included the details contained in the micro-chip embedded in Alek’s scalp. “I have the equivalent of an IMEI number that you may be able to trace.”

  Zoe’s pulse quickened as she said, “Text me the details. I’m on
it.”

  ***

  Vijay’s phone rang, and his heart leaped when he saw the caller ID was “Jen.” She had seen the news of the shootings and killings, and she realized that as wrong as she felt it was for Vijay to supply the FBI with information, anything that might stop the attacks was better. She wanted to come home, but Vijay suggested she wait a while longer to see what unfolded with Alek. Jennifer countered with leaving Karima with her parents for a while. She wanted to be with Vijay.

  Vijay agreed and explained that there was the possibility of finding Alek through the chip in his head. She laughed but was worried about Alek’s safety.